


A Multitude of Drops

by miabicicletta



Series: Certain Calculations [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Futurefic, Parentlock, Series 4 is thrown out the window, and a little bit of Series 3, non-canon compliant, seriously that is how long this has been in the works, the author apologizes for her tardiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9487691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: Anna Holmes touches his shoulder. “It’s done then?”“It’s done.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my WIPs for a very, very long time. Almost two years, and for all the time it has been complete. This was written well before TAB and S4, so it is total AU. In fact, this whole universe started before S3 was finished (which is why I have John and Mary having a son rather than a daughter.) I wanted to post these stories more or less in order, but, well, it feels somehow fitting to post this now, at the end of S4 and possibly Sherlock in general. I’d hoped to tease out the drama of what happens with Jack and Anna and David and their cohort, but fuck it. You deserve nice things sooner rather than later. 
> 
> I do promise (promise!) this is by far from the last story in the _Certain Calculations_ universe. However, I can say that, chronologically, it is the final one. I love these darlings, and love you all for being part of this mad, mad journey. 
> 
> Title and quoted section comes from the last page of David Mitchell’s _Cloud Atlas_ , which is every bit as brilliant and astounding a novel as the film is not.

* * *

 

David Watson sets his glasses aside and rubs the bridge of his nose. His eyes are dry and tired. His neck aches.

Creaky jamb. “All right there?”

“Yeah. Just weary.”

Anna Holmes touches his shoulder. “It’s done then?”

“It’s done.”

She reads over his shoulder. “Clever title.”

He glances up, wry. “Took me ages.”

She hums a tune of amusement, slides her hand across his shoulders, easing tension, the knots of being hunched over his desk, searching, searching. She perches on the edge of the chair, considers the scrap of writing taped to the wall above the screen. “What’s this?”

David leans into her embrace. He gestures in half-hearted explanation. “Something I’ve been mulling as I write. Sort of my north star.”

“Sentimental sap,” Anna teases.

“Guilty as charged. Stel and Leo still out?”

“Yeah. Down for the count.”

“You?”

“Few hours. Gotta preso to wrap up.”

Of course. Mad workaholic. Her father’s ferocity, true, but more of her mother’s devotion. He shakes off the legacy, knowing it is true, though incomplete. Anna’s curiosity and drive are her own, no more, no less. “This the UCL symposia thing-y?”

She shakes her head. “Cambridge. They’re going to offer the Hawking chair. _Yet again_ ,” she sighs dramatically.

He wraps his arms around her middle, looking up at her with wonder. “How perfectly frustrating being the most sought-after theoretical cosmologist in all the land. How _ever_ do you stand it, Dr. Holmes?”

“Disagreeably. But then, it is my cross to bear.” Her dark eyes sparkle. She glances at the clock. “Still meeting the idiot?”

“Yep.”

“Good.” She kisses him. “Watch his back, would you?”

“Yes, ma’am. Always, ma’am.”  

“Good answer.”

“What would he think?” he asks Jack over drinks at a Hackney dive where his best friend is scouting out a pharmahack ring for Interpol while moonlighting as lead guitar for a Finnish metal band.

David’s own black t-shirt and dark, square glasses offer some semblance of anonymity. Disguises were never his forte, but it does the trick. He’s not precisely worried anyone in this crowd will recognize a graying journalist approaching forty, but stranger things. Brave new world, and all.

Jack Holmes tosses back a shot of water masquerading as tequila. “Fuck if I know. ‘Dull.’ ‘Boring.’ ‘Isn’t most of this covered in the blog?’” he imitates. Rather well. But then, he would.

David gestures with his Kilmagoon. "Kohl's a nice look for you.”  

“I’m told it brings out my eyes.” Jack bats his lashes provocatively.

David snorts and takes a moment to hate him. “It does.” How Kiera put up with him...Though, he acknowledged, knowing Jack’s wife, it was probably both her idea and handiwork.

“How’s your mum?” David asks after a beat.  

Jack stares into the rows of bottles behind the bar. “Busy. She’s assumed his bad habits, I think. Hates being in Sussex. Teaching at UCL now, too. And she mentioned something about being up in Oxford the other day.” He looks back at David. “She got rid of the beehives.”

“No!”

Jack shrugs. “Donated them to the Southeast Apiary Society. Should have done it months ago, but...”

“Yeah. Wow. The bees.”

“Yeah.”

David thumbs the rim of his glass. He and Molly are similar in so many ways. His first marriage had been an act of rebellion; an adrenaline-fueled point that needed proving. He’d been so _young._ Hungry for something he couldn’t define. Escape from the spotlit bubble that was London. The privileged rancor at LSE. He thought being a war reporter would satisfy that indefinable longing, and when it hadn't, he’d thought Aya would. _Aya_. An old, worried-down sadness. Her death in Bahrain during the incursion had been terrible, but they’d known it was over long before an IED ended her life. Her life, and any chance they might have had to set things right. 

Even knowing his own first-wife’s death intimately, having felt her blood on his hands and her heartbeat fade beneath his palms, David finds it somehow impossible to imagine what Molly Hooper must feel. Empirically, he understands to an extent. She told him, in so many interviews and in so many moments through all the hours and days and years of her– _their_ –life. She’d loved a man equal parts legend and lunacy since practically the moment they'd met. What, then...

He knows, though he can hardly fathom.

It’s late when he gets home. Anna is asleep, her laptop and notes tidily piled on her desk. Stella and Leo are still dead to the world.

He considers the manuscript a final time. It may not be his last book, but it will, he knows with certainty, be his greatest achievement. It is, simply, his life's work.

Above the stack of pages, dense with final notes and edits, is the scrap of text Anna had spied earlier in the evening: A trio of scribbled lines from a long ago novel he’d marveled over, stunned by its unique and thrilling depth, its audacity, its humanity.

 

> _I hear my father-in-law's response..."Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!" _
> 
> _Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?_

 

In the silence of his home, David Watson smiles.

 

* * *

 

_The Observer Sunday Book Review_

Notable Non-Fiction Release

_Sherlock_

By David W. Watson (Introduction by Dr. John H. Watson)

 _Little Brown & Co. 548 pages. _ _£35._

 

EXCERPT:

**FOREWORD**

 

_Sherlock Holmes died before my parents met. He was present the day I was born. He stood at my weddings, and he held my children—his grandchildren— minutes after their birth. He was my godfather, and though he thought it the most useless title ever devised for such a distinction, it must be said, his commitment always outweighed his criticism. He saved my life when I was eight years old and I have never forgotten the fear that he might not. To this day, his son is my best friend. When we were children, his daughter was, at times, my greatest enemy. As it happens, she also became the great love of my life._

 

_Sherlock Holmes could be cold and cruel. He was brilliant, of course, but unexpectedly funny. He had deep insecurities, and deeper demons. He was never loved by anyone more than by my godmother, even during the many years before they were romantically involved, or later, when they were briefly estranged. Of all the relationships I’ve encountered in my life, theirs has taught me the most about love in all its forms, and in all its imperfections._

 

_Childish and vain, he was nonetheless generous and wise. He was a recovering heroin addict who replaced drugs with mysteries, and possessed a moral compass whose True North lay somewhere off center from everyone else’s. He killed people in the course of his work, yes. He also saved more lives than can be counted (though as the appendix of this volume will demonstrate, I have tried)._

 

_For his services to criminal justice and law enforcement, he was knighted. He spent the entire time talking about his son’s musical recital and his daughter’s martial arts prowess. Later, my wife would demonstrate her abilities to their fullest. I am not sure His Majesty has ever forgotten that particular afternoon at the palace. I know I haven’t (and not because her brother posted the episode online)._

 

_There is much to say about the man and his character. I will try to visit his many and complicated facets in as fair an examination as possible. Though, as my life has always been tied to his in some fashion, this will be, to some degree, a piece of my own history as much as it is a record of the life of the great Consulting Detective. My aim is, as was his, to do the puzzle justice._

 

_The day my father, the late army doctor-cum-blogger John Watson, investigated his first case with Sherlock Holmes, Gregory Lestrade (now retired after more than four decades in service to New Scotland Yard, the last of which he served as its commissioner) said something that stayed with my father for the rest of his life:_

 

_“Sherlock Holmes is a great man,” then-Detective Inspector Lestrade spoke to my father’s younger self, fresh from the war in Afghanistan that day in 2010. “And if we’re very lucky, some day he might even be a good one.”_

  
_He was. We were._

**Author's Note:**

> [narrator voice over] [Hey, that’s the name of the show!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etQnumOL9KM)


End file.
